IHRA Set For Quad Cities Return

The IHRA Nitro Jam Summer Nationals will feature one of the largest Nitro Funny Car fields of the season this weekend. (IHRA Photo)

CORDOVA, Ill. – For six exciting years in the late 90s and early 2000s, Cordova Dragway Park was on top of the IHRA world.

Hosting the annual Summer Nationals with the International Hot Rod Ass’n’s professional drag racing series from 1997-2002, the world-class facility, famous for its incredible fan and racer hospitality and blazing fast track, produced one of the premier, must-see events on the IHRA schedule.

Now, after a 12 year wait, the IHRA is finally back in the Quad Cities.

Cordova Dragway Park, located on the banks of the mighty Mississippi River, will once again host the IHRA’s biggest summer spectacular as the Summer Nationals return to Illinois for three full days of drag racing action capped off with the Nitro Jam Drag Racing Series professional competition July 18-19.

Featuring one of the biggest nostalgia Nitro Funny Car races in the country, plus action in Nitro Harley, Nitro Altered, Pro Stock, Jet Dragster and more, fans will be in for a treat when the IHRA returns to Cordova Dragway Park for a massive celebration of all things drag racing.

“Having this event back at Cordova Dragway Park is a big win for the racers, fans and businesses in the Quad Cities area. It has been more than a decade since the IHRA last raced at Cordova Dragway Park and I am thrilled to be able to bring this unique and exciting event back to Cordova,” said Scott Gardner, President of IHRA Motorsports and former manager of Cordova Dragway Park. “This event, coupled with an already stellar lineup of great racing events held throughout the year, will only help elevate the tracks reputation as a leader in providing world class motorsports entertainment in the Quad Cities region.”

Race fans will enjoy over two dozen nitro-powered race machines when IHRA returns to Cordova Dragway Park as the track hosts competition in Nitro Funny Car, Nitro Harley and Nitro Altered, plus racing in the powerful mountain-motor Pro Stock division, the world’s only Jet Dragster class, a full weekend of sportsman racing with the Summit Racing Equipment Pro-Am Tour and more.

And this year, every lap matters as the stars of the Nitro Jam Drag Racing Series push their machines to the limit in their chase for the 2014 IHRA World Championships. Already this season, IHRA fans have witnessed multiple records in three professional classes shattered by the intense competition.

Among the record-setting performances in 2014 have been great showings from IHRA’s Nitro Funny Car class, made even bigger at the Summer Nationals as Cordova hosts one of the biggest Nitro Funny Car races of the year.

IHRA’s only completely open field will welcome more than a dozen of the fastest Funny Cars in the world trying to make an eight-car field and take home one of the most coveted trophies of the year.